Fine art photographer Amit Verma feels that black and white photography is the purest form of expression as it presents the soul of the image. By Team Viva
Isolated and wild landscape, unique wildlife, Buddhist monasteries, warm people — the journey to Spiti Valley will take you through all of this and also, unexplored roads. Life there is quiet and perhaps that’s why every moment has its own significance.
A visit to the valley will certainly leave you with a thousand pictures. And so was the case with fine art photographer Amit Verma. But what makes his photographs unusual is his monochrome love. He has captured all the pictures in black and white. “People ask me why I shoot without colour and I tell them, ‘I only see in monochrome.’ I don’t see in colour. I only see light and tones,” said he.
His solo exhibition Light and Lines in the Middle Land, a collection of 25 photographs was a monochrome journey through the valley. Shot in a single, 10-day trip, Verma’s images are a trifecta of the region’s wild beauty, a photographer’s control and the optics of the Leica M camera. Light and Lines is also a testament to the professional, digital photographic print.
Explaining the reason to name the exhibition such, Amit in an interview earlier had said, “You will see the drama of light in the landscapes. The drama which the light is throwing where I was, plus the lines and the contours of the landscape because I have captured these photographs in such a way that if there was a river, it also looks like a line reflecting the light.”
Though monochrome has its own charm and popularity but people usually people find beauty in colours. However contrary to this the photographer said, “Monochrome photography for me is the purest form of expression as it presents the soul of image.”
The photographer feels that such paintings have their charm intact as they are very subtle and nuanced. He recently said in an interview, “There is a fine nuance in black and white photography to capture light and present it in a very raw form. It makes the older generation nostalgic as they have seen monochrome prints throughout their life and also created a wonderland for the new generation.”
When it comes to the perspective of fine art, he believes that monochrome photography forces the viewer to imagine where the landscapes are.
For him it is very important to leave his legacy in the analog form. “I started printing on my own because I don’t want to leave my paintings behind as digital dust in hard drives,” said he.